Page 174 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2021. Opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama ▪︎ Operetta between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 5
P. 174
opereta med obema svetovnima vojnama
it did in 1922. This possession is not a legal fact in the operetta, but a mani-
festation of memory politics.14
What is the language?
The operetta is an ideal medium for the emotional evocation and present-
day reexperience of the past, because the genre does not recall specific or
accurate historical events, it summons the affective waves of memory. The
music conveys these emotions with folk melodies, an orchestration based
on violins and traditional woodwinds, a Hungarian rhythm, but the lan-
guage of the utterances leads the present-day reader of the libretto into a
curious territory. In 2020, the linguistic register of the libretto is incom-
prehensible, it is impossible to decipher what this hundred-year-old theat-
rical language is meant to express, and who is speaking it. Evidently this
language does not serve to convey information, but to establish character-
isation, so we can only interpret its sound, not its semantics. The language
of operetta is Hungarian intermingled with German and Yiddish, intoned
in an urban accent. Such a language never really existed, and it is not to be
deciphered through the meanings of words and syntax, but through the
workings of familial and communal relationships. The father says whate ver
an overprotective father ought to say, the daughter says whatever a rebel-
lious daughter should, and the socially dynamic cliché is intelligible.
Werner: ‘You girl! ... You dared to dance in this club? ... Halt’s maul!
... Calm down now! ... Not a word! ... Das gibts nichts! ... I wear the
trousers! You’ll get what’s coming to you. Now go upstairs and pack,
we’re leaving with the early morning stagecoach!15
Operetta uncovers untranslatable clichés, and the clichés cause the
language to appear insipid, but this insipidity reveals communal patterns
of speech. In 1922, at a rural ball, this is how a father speaks to his young
daughter. The literature on operetta considers this linguistic register a facet
of the genre’s banality, but acknowledges that it is capable of accurately
sketching out the communicative network of a community, a framework
of reality that everyone in the audience recognises. The realist depiction of
14 Ibid., 135.
15 Kulinyi and Vincze, Hamburgi menyasszony [Libretto – prompter’s copy], 32–3.
Rough translation, since the original is untranslatable and largely deliberate gibbe-
rish.
172
it did in 1922. This possession is not a legal fact in the operetta, but a mani-
festation of memory politics.14
What is the language?
The operetta is an ideal medium for the emotional evocation and present-
day reexperience of the past, because the genre does not recall specific or
accurate historical events, it summons the affective waves of memory. The
music conveys these emotions with folk melodies, an orchestration based
on violins and traditional woodwinds, a Hungarian rhythm, but the lan-
guage of the utterances leads the present-day reader of the libretto into a
curious territory. In 2020, the linguistic register of the libretto is incom-
prehensible, it is impossible to decipher what this hundred-year-old theat-
rical language is meant to express, and who is speaking it. Evidently this
language does not serve to convey information, but to establish character-
isation, so we can only interpret its sound, not its semantics. The language
of operetta is Hungarian intermingled with German and Yiddish, intoned
in an urban accent. Such a language never really existed, and it is not to be
deciphered through the meanings of words and syntax, but through the
workings of familial and communal relationships. The father says whate ver
an overprotective father ought to say, the daughter says whatever a rebel-
lious daughter should, and the socially dynamic cliché is intelligible.
Werner: ‘You girl! ... You dared to dance in this club? ... Halt’s maul!
... Calm down now! ... Not a word! ... Das gibts nichts! ... I wear the
trousers! You’ll get what’s coming to you. Now go upstairs and pack,
we’re leaving with the early morning stagecoach!15
Operetta uncovers untranslatable clichés, and the clichés cause the
language to appear insipid, but this insipidity reveals communal patterns
of speech. In 1922, at a rural ball, this is how a father speaks to his young
daughter. The literature on operetta considers this linguistic register a facet
of the genre’s banality, but acknowledges that it is capable of accurately
sketching out the communicative network of a community, a framework
of reality that everyone in the audience recognises. The realist depiction of
14 Ibid., 135.
15 Kulinyi and Vincze, Hamburgi menyasszony [Libretto – prompter’s copy], 32–3.
Rough translation, since the original is untranslatable and largely deliberate gibbe-
rish.
172
